Michael Shermer And Bart Ehrman On Christmas And Christianity

Michael Shermer recently had Bart Ehrman on his YouTube channel. There are too many problems with the comments made by both of them for me to interact with everything. They address a wide range of topics: Jesus' existence, the virgin birth, Trinitarianism, the atonement, the resurrection of Jesus, the problem of evil, etc. But Ehrman was on the program primarily to discuss Christmas issues. He had an online seminar on the subject coming up on December 5, and that was Shermer's main interest. What I want to do in the remainder of this post is respond to some of their comments about Christmas and prophecy fulfillment.

Micah 4-5 Fulfilled In Jesus

I want to have a post that links all three parts of my series in one place:

Jesus' Fulfillment Of Micah 4-5

How difficult was it to determine Jesus' birthplace?

Jesus' Birthplace Outside Matthew And Luke

Jesus' Birthplace Outside Matthew And Luke

Among the earliest sources, the place of Jesus' birth is discussed most explicitly in Matthew and Luke. But his birthplace is implied elsewhere in the New Testament and is discussed in the early patristic literature, and those other sources get much less attention in modern considerations of where Jesus was born. The evidence from ancient non-Christian sources has been neglected as well. What I want to do in this post is address some of those sources outside Matthew and Luke.

For some important background to this post, see my article on Micah 4-5 and my article on how difficult it would have been for people to determine where Jesus was born. You don't need to read those in order to understand what I'm arguing here, but those other posts will help you understand the larger significance of this one.

How difficult was it to determine Jesus' birthplace?

I've argued that Micah 4-5 is an eschatological, messianic passage that predicts the birth of the Messiah in Bethlehem. Issues like whether that prophecy has been fulfilled and whether it's been fulfilled by Jesus in particular are important, but they're rarely discussed in much depth. One of the subjects that doesn't get much attention is what access the relevant historical sources had to information on Jesus' place of birth. How well could they have judged the subject? Were they in a position to pass on reliable information to future generations?

Not enough consideration has been given to how Jesus' birthplace is connected to other issues. His birthplace wasn't an isolated issue about which people either were ignorant or had the most direct, explicit sort of knowledge. Rather, it's a subject with a lot of connections to other topics, so that people could discern Jesus' place of birth and corroborating evidence for it by a large variety of direct and indirect and explicit and implicit means.

Jesus' Fulfillment Of Micah 4-5

A few years ago, I wrote about Isaiah 9:1-7, and much of what I said there is relevant to chapters 4 and 5 in Micah. I won't repeat everything I said in those posts. See here regarding issues like the origins of the Israelite monarchy in 1 Samuel 8 and some material that Isaiah and Micah have in common. In another post, I explained why we shouldn't think Isaiah 9 was fulfilled by Hezekiah or some other Jewish king of the Old Testament era. Some of what I said there is applicable to the material in Micah. Since there's so much overlap between what's said in Isaiah and what's said in Micah, those posts from a few years ago provide a lot of background for this post.

Micah 5:2 is often singled out in discussions of prophecy fulfillment, but the remainder of the chapter and the previous one should get more attention than they usually do. Chapters 4 and 5 are both eschatological and messianic. Chapter 4 opens with a discussion of Yahweh ruling the nations forever from Jerusalem in "the last days", and chapter 5 concludes with a reference to his executing vengeance on the nations. Both are addressing what will happen "in that day" (4:6, 5:10). Some of the same or similar themes are found in both chapters, and they often shed light on one another.

Enfield Miscellany (Part 6)

(See part 1 here for an explanation of what this series is about. Here are links to the other parts: two, three, four, and five. I'll be citing the Enfield tapes of Maurice Grosse and Guy Playfair. I'll use "MG" to reference a tape from Grosse's collection and "GP" to designate one from Playfair's. MG44A refers to tape 44A in Grosse's collection, and GP10A refers to 10A in Playfair's, for example.)

Hazel Short's Other Experiences

She's typically discussed in the context of a levitation of Janet Hodgson that Short witnessed on December 15, 1977. The other events she witnessed don't get much attention. An article published several years ago reports:

Hazel, now 65, said: “I was once invited into her [Peggy Hodgson's] house, it was a boiling hot summer’s day outside but inside it was like a freezer, ice-cold.

“Peggy, Janet’s mum, led me through to the downstairs toilet and stuck to the wall was the toilet brush and a bottle of bleach.

“I will never forget what I saw and felt in that house. “It’s just a surprise that the story has taken this long to be turned into a film.”

She seems to be saying that the toilet brush and bottle of bleach were sticking to the wall in a paranormal manner.

Luke 1:56 And The Importance Of Bracketing

In a post about Luke's census account a few years ago, I mentioned the value of bracketing the first three verses of Luke 2 to highlight the fact that Jesus and his family don't enter the narrative until verse 4. Bracketing is often helpful in understanding Biblical passages and working through some of the issues involved. And Luke's material on Jesus' childhood provides us with another example.

As I mentioned in a post earlier this year, Joseph's presence in Nazareth in Luke 2:4 makes more sense if you read 2:4 in the context of 1:56. But people typically don't do that, since the material between 1:56 and 2:4 is distracting them from 1:56 and what led up to it. If you bracket the material about Mary and Jesus in 1:26-56 and the material about Jesus and his family starting in 2:4, you'll have a better understanding of some aspects of what's going on. You can read the post linked at the beginning of this paragraph for an explanation of how 2:4 makes more sense in light of 1:56. Luke had good reason to present the material as he did. The paralleling of John the Baptist and Jesus, going back and forth between the two, accomplishes some good things. But it's helpful to also bracket the material I've mentioned above and read that bracketed material together.

And it helps to do the same in other contexts. A major example outside of Luke that I've often cited is John 7:53-8:11. That passage shouldn't be included in John's gospel, but when it's present, it's important to bracket it to assist in reading 8:12 in light of 7:52 and what led up to it.

Christmas Resources 2021

I've written some articles that can be used as starting points for researching Christmas issues. One is about how to concisely argue for a traditional Christian view of the childhood of Jesus. The other is about how Jesus viewed himself as the figure of Isaiah 9:1-7 and framed his public ministry around that identity.

The following are examples of other Christmas issues we've addressed over the years:

Appreciating The Accomplishments Of Past Generations

I see the years like billows break
Upon the passive strand of time,
And as they break, sweep off in turn
Man's works of every age and clime.
Who, what am I amid the wreck
Of all this beauty, love, and power,
O'er which I weep, but whose decay
I cannot hinder for an hour?
The true is never obsolete,
The never old is never stale;
I guard the gold of ancient mines,
And gather gems, though few and pale;
I call them fair - as fair as when
They dropped from God's bright heaven for men.
(Horatius Bonar, "The Silence Of Faith", Hymns Of The Nativity [London, England: James Nisbet & Co., 1879], 53)

The Light Of His Eternal Glory

"Indeed, it is adversity on the outside that is often the catalyst for regained fellowship with God on the inside (Ps. 119:67). In 1745 Boston pastor Benjamin Colman's daughter died, following the death of another daughter, the debilitating illness of his wife, and the death of his associate pastor. [Jonathan] Edwards wrote a moving letter to Colman with a desire that 'when you are thus deprived of the company of your temporal friends, you may have sweet communion with the Lord Jesus Christ more abundantly, and that as God has gradually been darkening this world to you, putting out one of its lights after another, so he would cause the light of his eternal glory more and more to dawn within you.'" (Dane Ortlund, Edwards On The Christian Life [Wheaton, Illinois: Crossway, 2014], 118)

Precedent For Metaphorically Drinking Blood And Eating God

Do a Ctrl F search for "John 6" in Glenn Miller's article here. In a video here, Steven Nemes makes a lot of good points about the eucharist and whether Christ is physically present in it. My main interest in this post, though, is his examples of precedent for viewing the eucharist in a way that doesn't involve a physical presence. We often apply the same sort of reasoning in other areas of life (when speaking of the Passover elements, when referring to how an actor is the character he represents, etc.).

He Gives His Rest Under A Yoke

I've been reading John Piper's recent book on providence. As he continues to produce so much good work in his retirement years, it's useful to look back at a poem he wrote about retirement and the dangers of sloth shortly before he retired. If you go here, you can read the poem, with an introduction explaining its background, and watch a video of Piper reading it.

Don't Underestimate Prophecy Fulfillment

Prophecy fulfillment is often underestimated in a lot of contexts for a lot of reasons. For example, it seems that people often underestimate the value of prophecy fulfillment that's occurred since the Biblical era, and there's probably more than one reason why that happens. We hear more about the postbiblical era than the Biblical era, since we have more evidence for the former and it's closer to our time. We become more accustomed to it accordingly, and we often grow increasingly less appreciative of something the more we're accustomed to it. And we don't have any Biblical passages informing or reminding us that the prophecies have been fulfilled and how significant those fulfillments are, since the fulfillments occurred after the Bible was written. I suspect there's also an overreaction to false claims that have been made about alleged prophecy fulfillment in our day and in previous generations. People overreact to those false claims by going too far in the other direction, so that they neglect the fulfillments that have occurred.

Here's a post I wrote a couple of years ago that provides some examples of postbiblical prophecy fulfillment and how to argue for it. And this post goes into more depth about how to think through and articulate the principles involved. Here's one that lists some examples of prophecies fulfilled by non-Christians and/or whose fulfillment is acknowledged by non-Christians. The list includes some postbiblical fulfillments.

If Jesus was teaching a physical presence in the eucharist, why didn't he explain it better?

Advocates of a physical presence of Christ in the eucharist often suggest that he couldn't have made the concept much clearer than he did, that he should have made some other view of the eucharist clearer if he had some other view in mind, and so forth. For example, we'll be asked what could be clearer than what Jesus said in John 6. Or if Jesus wasn't teaching a physical eucharistic presence there, then why didn't he clarify that fact, especially after people expressed their opposition to such an interpretation of his comments (6:52, 6:60) and some abandoned him (6:66)? Or what could be clearer than Jesus' words at the Last Supper? And so on.

There are a lot of problems with that sort of reasoning. I'm not going to address all of those problems here, but I want to discuss some of them. The primary issue I want to address here is that a lack of clarification from Jesus is more of a problem for the physical presence view than for views of the eucharist not involving a physical presence.

Where have you been?

"All that I beg for is this, that you would step aside oftener to talk with God and your own heart; that you would not suffer every trifle to divert you; that you would keep a more true and faithful account of your thoughts and affections; that you would seriously demand of your own heart at least every evening, 'O my heart, where hast thou been today, and what has engaged thy thoughts?'" (John Flavel, Keeping The Heart [Great Britain: Christian Focus Publications, 2019], 111-12)

Making Good Use Of People's False Priorities

When Christians are talking about younger generations - Millennials, Generation Z, or whoever - there's a tendency to focus on issues like those associated with the LGBTQ movement and racial controversies. We'll often be told that those are the issues people in those generations are the most concerned about, are talking about the most, or some such thing.

But why defer to the judgment of younger people on these issues, since they are, after all, younger people who tend to be less wise, less experienced, and so on? It's like the polls asking people what man or woman they admire most. Many will name somebody like the President, the First Lady, or the Pope, whichever names quicky and easily come to mind and seem like respectable answers at the moment. It's not as though they've given the issue much thought.

And it doesn't make sense to think that something like transgenderism, race relations, or legalizing marijuana is the most important subject in life or what we should be talking about most. I want to focus on another point, though, which should get more attention than it does.

We ought to be using the false priorities of people as an argument against their worldviews and those of the people influencing them. If what you're most concerned about in life is something like transgenderism or race relations, what does that suggest about your priorities? If the people influencing you the most - your relatives, your friends, Hollywood, academia, the media, and so on - keep neglecting God, the afterlife, and other issues that are so obviously so much more important than what the people most influencing you talk to you about the most, what does that suggest about their trustworthiness? We should make more of an issue of how unloving and irrational it is for people to be so negligent about what's most important in life while giving so much attention to matters that are so much less significant. The fact that young people are so focused on the issues they're most focused on is itself a strong line of evidence that they've been misled and should be questioning the sources who have taken them so far astray. It's not difficult to explain to people why subjects like God and the afterlife are so important. And it's not difficult to demonstrate that those subjects have been highly neglected by the relevant sources, who keep encouraging people to focus on matters of much less significance.

The Treasures Of John

The upcoming Christmas season is another good reason to read Lydia McGrew's recent book arguing for the historicity of John's gospel. (There's now a Kindle version of it.) See here regarding the fourth gospel's underestimated material on Christmas issues.

Imagine a young man, heir to a fortune, who has been told for years that certain portions of that fortune must not be used, claimed, or relied upon. Some of his most beautiful and pleasant properties, some of the loveliest treasures left to him by his ancestors, must never be treated as if they are really his. He may appreciate them aesthetically from a distance, but he may not live on the estates or handle the precious objects, and he is not free to spend any of those treasures for his most serious needs. His earnest advisors tell him (at least initially) that this is not because they themselves think that there is anything questionable about his right to these properties. But, they say, there are learned geographers who doubt that most of the lands even exist. Some lawyers question whether the heir has proper title to the lands; his advisors therefore worry that he will be evicted should he take up residence. Others, eminent financiers, believe that the property in question will disappear in some complex financial fashion if he should attempt to claim it. So the young heir learns to live on a far more modest inheritance and to act in practice as though he does not even possess some of his own property. Even some beautiful places and things that his father particularly wanted him to have do not come into his hands, for he has been taught not to claim them.

Now, suppose that some of his own advisors one day begin to say that they, too, have decided that he does not really own this great portion of his patrimony, that it is a chimera, or that it has disappeared in a financial crash. Will the man be likely to check out their statements? Is he not more likely to conclude that nothing much is at stake? After all, he has lived without this property for many years. He has had to behave as if he did not own it. Why should he bother to find out whether his current advisors are wrong or right, now that some of them also question this property?

In just such a way deference to credentialism and the persistent practical refusal to rely upon John’s Gospel create psychological indifference to its historicity and a passive willingness to let it be taken from us by scholarly skepticism. Yet if John’s Gospel is historically reliable, it is a very great treasure, far dearer than mere houses or lands or any earthly gold or silver. It tells us much that the other Gospels do not relate about the teachings and doings of Jesus Christ, and, if it belongs in the canon of Scripture with all of its overt claims to be the product of witness testimony, then these unique historical stories are gifts that our heavenly Father wanted us to have for our spiritual needs. They cannot truly satisfy those needs if they are merely pious fictions. Should we not then rouse ourselves to investigate the question of whether or not we can rely upon John?

(Lydia McGrew, pp. 18-19 here)

A Day Living With A Poltergeist

One way of conveying what it's like to live with a poltergeist is to walk through the events of a particular day. And I've been wanting to write more about the events of May 30, 1978 in the Enfield case, since it was one of the most significant days in the case and has received much less attention than it should.

In the process of discussing what happened that day, I'll be citing Maurice Grosse and Guy Playfair's Enfield tapes. I'll refer to Grosse's tapes with "MG", meaning that MG31A is a reference to tape 31A in his collection. And I'll refer to Playfair's tapes with "GP", so that GP68B is a reference to his tape 68B.

No Bishop Of Bishops

"For neither does any of us set himself up as a bishop of bishops, nor by tyrannical terror does any compel his colleague to the necessity of obedience; since every bishop, according to the allowance of his liberty and power, has his own proper right of judgment, and can no more be judged by another than he himself can judge another. But let us all wait for the judgment of our Lord Jesus Christ, who is the only one that has the power both of preferring us in the government of His Church, and of judging us in our conduct there." (Cyprian)

As you can see on the page linked above, dozens of other bishops at the council spoke after Cyprian made his comments. Nobody voiced any disagreement with what he said. They often appeal to scripture and reason to justify their position on the matter before them, but nobody appeals to papal authority. And nobody gives any indication of thinking that such an office existed or that departing from it or operating independently of it needed to be justified.

Lessons From Other Holidays

We can learn some lessons from other holidays about how to make the most of Reformation Day. Holidays like Memorial Day and the Fourth of July are as influential as they are partly for reasons that are applicable to Reformation Day as well. Themes like risking and sacrificing and individuals laying down their lives for a good cause resonate with people, earn their respect, and often move their emotions, form lasting memories, and motivate them to do good things they wouldn't do otherwise. The principles, events, and movements of the Reformation should be discussed, but also the stories of the individuals involved.

A good resource to use in homes, churches, and other contexts is Ken Connolly's documentary The Indestructible Book. It's about the history of the Bible, especially how it got to America in the English language. It starts at the time of Moses and concludes with Plymouth Rock. It doesn't go into much depth, but it's good for introductory and motivational purposes. It often touches on themes like the ones I mentioned in the opening of this post, and there are many segments of the documentary that would be good to use in that context. It's good at conveying the work that went into giving us the Bible, the significance of scripture, and the cost many people paid to bring it to us. Some parts of it, like the segments on John Wycliffe and the ones on Thomas Bilney and other martyrs around the time of the Reformation, are especially moving. You can watch the whole thing here. It gets especially good starting here, with the material on Wycliffe. And here's a section on the martyrdom of Wycliffe's followers. Here's an account of Bilney's conversion, and here's the segment on his martyrdom. Those are just a few examples. The whole thing is worth watching, though the quality varies from one portion to another.